The Two Forces of Mauricio Lasansky: Contrasting "The Nazi Drawings" and "Kaddish"

The Two Forces of Mauricio Lasansky: Contrasting “The Nazi Drawings” and “Kaddish” By Clinton James Rogers

Viewed unwittingly, without the aid of an artist’s biography nor the proper association to the specific historical aura that is it’s subject matter, Mauricio Lasansky’s seminal “Envisioning Evil: The Nazi Drawings” has the raw power and nightmarish intensity to nearly cripple it’s viewer’s sense of humanity with it’s savage depiction of the depravity of “man become animal.” The monumental series lays bare the outright disgust and outrage the artist felt about the atrocities committed in the concentration camps of World War II. His retrospective “Kaddish” too, can discombobulate and disorient one unfamiliar with the artist’s intentions and revelations. While both of these series of works deal candidly with the same barbaric subject, his objectives, however nuanced, are divergent in striking ways. These two fundamentally different perspectives were achieved primarily through his choice of medium and his expressive handling of the iconography. In this essay, I will attempt to contrast the artists choices in the overall composition of these two powerful sets of images.

The “Nazi Drawings,” in the light of Maurice Lasansky’s lifetime of art production, wouldn’t seem, upon first encountering them, much different than his earlier images of war-torn depredations or grim poverty. As a humanist and a man deeply concerned with the down trodden, especially those plights of peoples persecuted by tyrannical factions and governments, it must have come quite instinctively to him, that he would champion such paradigms in his art. If not for the colossal size and the veritable intensity of the works, what really sets these drawings apart from his earlier oeuvre is his choice of material. Lasansky is primarily known as the innovative master printmaker, who pushed the boundaries of expression in the graphic arts and thereby established printmaking as a meaningful medium on par with sculpture and painting in the United States. But with the “Nazi Drawings,” Lasansky opted for the quotidian: the common lead-based pencil, commercial paper, earthy water- and turpentine-based washes and page cutouts of an 18th-century bible and relevant newspapers’ articles. With these simple everyday materials of the “everyman,” the artist’s effort was in connecting simply and directly with the audience. His assumption was such that the use of a more sophisticated medium would highjack the grave message he was undertaking. These nightmarish phantasms had to be created with the same tool as that of school children doodling in the margins of their history notebook. Despite the lack of virtuosity, the potent expression of the images are achieved through the spontaneity and immediacy of the lines and wash, as if the figures were drawn with the nervous system itself.

“Kaddish,” in contrast, is the amalgamation of a lifetime’s experimentation with the intaglio printmaking processes. At first appearance seemingly simple and uncomplicated, the prints are the result of a medley of nearly every intaglio technique and remain some of the largest and most technically complex prints known to date. Achieving unity by shape, size, and subject matter, the series evolves with a diversification of color and technical craftsmanship. Through the use of drypoint, etching, stipple, engraving, soft-ground, relief, aquatint, and a myriad of other intaglio techniques on as many as 40 different plates for a single image, Lazansky presents us, in this small 8 print series, with his magnum opus of combined printmaking processes. Contrary to the “Nazi Drawings” which are two-dimensional, through techniques including embossing, his “Kaddish” series has an activated relief surface with textural and sculptural qualities. Color, too, is a point of difference in the execution of “Kaddish and the “Nazi Drawings.” “The Nazi Drawings” are stained with a monochrome pallet of subdued yellows, dark, blood-red and pinks in smears and splashes. The color scheme of “Kaddish,” on the contrary, is an eclectic assortment of varying degrees of primary and secondary colors in sometimes more than one flat shade.

Lasansky is probably best known for his images steeped in social commentary. In investigating and being appalled by the madness of what came to be known as the Holocaust, the artist was possessed by the need to confront the phenomenon. “The Nazi Drawings” are reactionary in an unleashed, honest and unmediated abhorrence. Hence the simplicity of the chosen materials gave him ready access to direct extraction. That Lasansky was considering the project a deliberate evocation of his response is evident in his remark that he “just wanted to get it out of him”, ...(he) “was so full of poison, bile that (he) just wanted to spit it out.” His intention was exorcism. The materials, on the other hand, were a conscious choice to make a connection to the universal “everyman.” His subject in “the Nazi Drawings” were the perpetrators and the enablers or, by the very least, the passive onlookers who allowed the evils to take place as well as the innocent victims. This is the specific subject of the “Nazi Drawings:” the perpetrators and their heinous acts, the devastation. In a somewhat parallel, yet contrasting fashion, “Kaddish” focuses on the aftermath, the iconography of figures are the survivors of the incidents both victim and offender. While some of the same characters make appearances, the true subject of the “Kaddish” prints is us.

The iconography of the two series makes for an incredibly telling divergence in terms of intention. There are visual rhymes in the two series: Lasansky’s unique use of linear tones, expressive figural elements denoting violence or guilt, the serial numbers reminiscent of those tattooed in the concentration camps, the use of both profile and face forward poses, and the placement of skull helmets upon the heads of the figures, etc. So it is quite obvious that they are paired in conversation which each other. But, “The Nazi Drawings” reflect a much higher pitch of the violence through its imagery than does the “Kaddish” series. And this is achieved in the bellicose and sexual dynamics portrayed in each picture. There is wailing, thrusting, in some depictions: a ripping of the flesh, a gnawing of the teeth; dark shrouded forms in Nazi regalia and their victims being taken apart and ravaged. There are prostitutes in highly evocative poses, embraced by ghoulish skeletons and nazi soldiers. Bemedaled soldiers with there pants down humiliate themselves, all the while hailing. The “Kaddish” images in contradistinction are static; the dust has settled. “Kaddish” represents Lasansky’s anguish in a different way. In “Kaddish” the figures are mere busts or sometimes just the head. It is here where the familiar characters become icons: It is done, it happened and now, how can we process these disconcerting acts of man and create a better future where this would never happen again? And to top off, as it were, in this subtle message he has split the images in two, the victims or guilt-ridden survivors taking up the lower register are capped with a dove: the universal symbol of peace. A parallel in the “Nazi Drawings” would be the ambiguous perching of carrion; hawks and eagles peck and rip at the skin and internal organs. The only semblance of the violence in “Kaddish” are the wounds, the deeply etched wrinkles of the faces, the sullen or guilt-ridden mood. “Kaddish,” though appealing to the universal impact of the abhorrent deeds, also gives more emphasis to the distinctly Jewish victimization. The word “Kaddish,” itself is Hebraic for a prayer cited over the death of a loved one and represents an entreaty for both bliss for the recently deceased and peace for all those who mourn. So the “Kaddish” prints are more particularly communicating a message of hope in the face of the endangered mortality and the futility of man.

Both “Envisioning Evil: The Nazi Drawings” and “Kaddish” portray a beleaguered attempt at coming to terms with the preposterous reality of the Holocaust. Their size and emotive puissance affect the body as well as the mind but with disparate modus operandi. “The Nazi Drawings” evoke an atmosphere of monstrous fantasy brought about by the initial shock of learning about the aforementioned abominations. “Kaddish” is a meditation of the survivors. Through it, we are summoned to recall and process the trauma of the past as we forge ahead in peace. These works engross us, we are meant to become both transgressor and victim, object and witness. These works are meant to disturb. The discomfort was the intention. Lasansky’s elaborate motivation was to keep the terror, the sheer loss of human and spiritual values alive in a way that forever reminds us of what a humanity astray is capable of. And in this, I believe, it is evident he was successful. Assailing onlookers for generations to come, both series remain in constant viewing as traveling shows, shown across the United States and abroad.

References

“Mauricio Lasansky: Thematic Retrospective.” Lasansky Art. Accessed October, 2020. http://lasanskyart.com/art/collections.nazidrawings.shtml

“The Nazi Drawings by Artist Mauricio Lasansky.” The Nazi Drawings. Accessed November 14, 2020. http://www.nazidrawings.com/Mauricio_Lasansky.html

Honig, Edwin. The Nazi drawings by Mauricio Lasansky. Iowa City, University of Iowa, c1966.

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